It is well known to provide a curtain airbag assembly that when deployed overlies one or more side windows of a vehicle. Before deployment the airbag is stowed behind a headliner or trim panel so as not to be visible to an occupant of the vehicle. If the vehicle has a number of side windows it may not be practical to use a single airbag to cover all of these due to the size of inflator required and/or the time delay in inflating a very large airbag. It is therefore known from, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,991,255 to provide a number of separate airbags that are joined together at their lower ends by tethers so as to effectively form when inflated a single airbag covering all of the side windows.
Such an airbag assembly can be reliant on the tethers used to connect adjacent airbags together keeping the airbags in close proximity in order for the airbags to operate as a single airbag. If the connection between airbag tethers is not correctly made or the tethers are not connected this could have a detrimental affect on deployment due to the fact that the airbags can separate as they deploy downwards.
A further problem of the incomplete connection of the tethers is that the airbag assembly could lose a proportion of its occupant retention properties due to the lack of tension in the airbag along the length of the vehicle.